So since this plan is so popular I might as well share my version of it I have adapted it to work with my personal tradition of the Psalms as a floating reading that I will read throughout the day as the Spirit calls me into communion, as such there are technically 11 tracks as opposed to Horner’s original 10.

The eleventh track is the Psalter, I read a chapter from each of two other tracks then read a Psalm, with one to start and one to finish this makes the total chapters read to be 16 in my morning devotion time.

The question of the right recipients and mode of Baptism is one that has been argued in the churches of the reformation since the rise of the Anabaptists, of the groups that advocate for believers baptism the framers of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith were the ones who make the most coherent and strongest argument for such.

In opposition to the Baptists the Presbyterians argued for paedobaptism in light of the continuation of covenantal signs for the children of the covenant. In response to this the Baptists argued that he New Covenant Constitution of the Church dictates the right recipients of Baptism, the New and Old covenants are of different substances, properly seen in Gal 4:22-31 the children of the covenantal promise are not the same as the children of nature, chiefmost in this disctintion we see that the children of nature only take on the covenantal sign of the Old Covenant. We cannot therefore argue that the sign of the New Covenant can be rightly administered to those who are only children of the flesh rather than children of promise. That Cornelius was stayed from baptism till the Spirit was visible upon him tells us that believers are the right recipients.

In Rom 6, Paul talks of our union with Christ being signified by our Baptism, not only does this tell us that we should be able to look back to our baptism as a death to self, but it also drives us to ask whether we should think of anything other than immersion as a proper mode. We are told explicitly that we are “buried with Christ.” such imagery cannot be said of aspersion or affusion, with immersion one is buried as it were in the waters of baptism and raised to life in Christ.

Faith in the man Jesus Christ arrests us, it lays claim not just to our faculties of reason, as far as Christianity is a thinking religion so too it makes itself a doing, a speaking, a feeling, and a being religion.
We are constantly in a state of being, we are being loved, being disciplined, being transformed from one degree of Glory to the next. Christianity fundamentally finds itself as a being religion, we are acted upon by God far more than we do this or that, or think this or that.
Just as much as for us to do, or think in separation from God we find ourselves thinking or doing against God! We must thrust ourselves upon Him, upon His mercies which are new each and every day. We must find our joy in Him, there is no other fount of joy.

The Investigative Judgment, is the distinctive doctrine of Seventh Day Adventism codified to cover themselves after their belief that Christ would return in 1844 failed to come true, instead it was postulated by some of the early Adventists that it was actually at this point that Christ entered the Most Holy Place, this belief was later supported by the “prophet” of the group Ellen G White and found its way into most of her writings, part of the original doctrine included the shut door belief that no-one who wasn’t a Christian (or in some cases an Adventist) at the time in which Christ entered the most Holy Place could not come under Grace, however as the group grew both through converts and births this part of the doctrine was dropped.

Now I have found no Scriptural evidence for this doctrine and I worry about the consequences of this belief as from my study, the SDA legalism flows from this doctrine.

In fact the book of Hebrews where the drumbeat of εφαπαξ “once-for-all” in relation to Christ’s work on the Cross destroys the doctrine.

If we follow the writer’s argument throughout the book we find that he culminates in the comparison of Christ’s work and that of the High Priest in 9:7-10 for the High Priest and 9:11-14 for Christ:

In verses 7-10 we see the Atonement ritual being described, being performed by the High Priest

verse 11 Christ has appeared, a High Priest, herald of the good! and so he enters in to the place (v12a) and we have this strange reference in 12b it’s not with the blood that the Old High Priests used to use (cf. Lev 16:15ff), but his own blood, by his own blood he is doing this and as opposed to what the Old High Priest managed to get done (cf. v9) Christ has secured eternal redemption (12c) we are then reminded of the inefficiency of the atoning work done by the Old High Priest in comparison to Christ (13-14b), he has accomplished a purification! Our consciences are no longer weighed down by the dead works! We serve the living and reigning God! (14c) These are all in the past tense, Christ has come and has completed the ministry in which the Old High Priest used to continually find remembrance of the sins of Israel, yet because Christ has done it once for all time, there is now no longer any remembrance for sin.

We draw near to God, not by the “same sacrifices continually offered yearly, not perfecting those who rely on them.” (10:1) but by the “sanctification that comes through the offered up blood of Jesus Christ once for all.” (10:10) Jesus entered into the presence of God (9:24) this cannot be merely into the antechamber, the presence of God was only ever thought of in that place when it was leaving or entering the earthly temple as in the dedication, or in Ezekiel’s vision, because the earthly temple’s Most Holy Place is the place of the Ark and the Mercy Seat of God’s Judgment that is where His presence is, so too when the writer talks of Christ as our sure and steadfast anchor beyond the veil what is being talked about when we are told to draw near is that we are being called into the Most Holy Place, and why? Because of the confidence we have in the blood of Christ, in His office as a priest after the type of Melchizedek.

The doctrine of the Investigative Judgment relies on reading into this passage another ritual that is not being discussed immediately beforehand in v7-10, nor immediately afterwards in 9:15-10:4 which continue to parallel Christ’s sacrifice with that of the atonement and other High Priestly functions, namely that of a mediator, rather to justify this importation of ideas we jump down to 10:11, and ignore 10:14 and the following discussion of the forgiveness wrought through Christ’s atonement work.

I have been redeemed and I have been judged through the Cross of Christ, I need not rely on my own righteousness, it is but rags, however God made him who knew no sin, become my sin, so that in him, I might be counted as his righteousness.